DISPATCHES FROM THE ARID LANDS

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Breaking up a home

How can you care for a spider? I don’t know exactly why but I do. Much of it, I think, stems from humanizing it a bit by giving it a name.

A few months ago, I gave a Daddy Long Legs the name of Cid. I spoke to it every morning when I turned on the floor lamp behind my reading chair in the dining room. Cid built a web under the shade, a mere six inches or so from my head. We got along fine. I read the morning newspaper without thinking of Cid. Daddy Long Legs are harmless to humans, I read. And Cid does a good business there in the shadow of a light that draws flying insects into its clutches.

But something unexpected happened.

Cid became pregnant. It was a she after all. A dozen or more white and brown eggs exuded from what I assumed was her head. She was so still I thought she might be dead. I tapped the web. She moved. Relief.

But her pregnancy, to my unhappiness, was the turning point. I moved the reluctant Cid to a dark corner of the garage. She can have her babies there.

I feel heartless in a way. Even in that tiny insect brain, I know by uprooting her Cid felt stress and the danger.

Twice I have looked for her in the garage but no sign yet. The last I saw of her she was scurrying up the ladder with eggs in tow.